Tag Archives: Irish Times
Slouching towards ruin with our eyes wide open
Bill McGuire is a volcanologist and prolific author who has been ringing the alarm bell on the climate emergency for decades. I filed a review of his latest oeuvre, The Fate Of The World, for the Books section of the … Continue reading
Posted in Extreme weather, Global Warming, Psychology
Tagged Bill McGuire, Irish Times
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When feeding the world is a fact, not a slogan
In June, I took the car ferry to Dunkirk, then drove from there to Amsterdam where I was based for several days of touring and visiting sites in Holland mainly related to their food sector, more specifically the famously productive … Continue reading
We need a Department of National Food Security – now
It’s been quite some time since I pitched an article to The Irish Times op-ed page, despite having been a regular there some time back. The below piece ran on Monday August 17th, under the newspaper headline: ‘The food industry … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Global Warming, Pollution, Sustainability
Tagged Denmark, Irish Times, Martin Heydon, Mette Frederiksen, Simon Coveney, Teagasc, The Lancet
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Lifting the omerta on speaking plainly
Let’s be honest for a moment. We have collectively pussy-footed around the climate and biodiversity emergency for years, decades in fact. Despite the scientific evidence piling ever higher week by week, it has long been taken as read that stating … Continue reading
A defining moment for humanity
A number of people active in the area of climate science and activism were asked by the Irish Times in April to contribute a fairly short vignette on where we saw the current situation. My contribution, titled “Few options available to … Continue reading
A safer future for all means a better future for most
This article appeared in the Irish Times in early May, based around an intriguing paper published in the journal ‘Global Environmental Change’, titled “Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario”. As the abstract begins: “It is increasingly clear … Continue reading
Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Sustainability
Tagged degrowth, Energy, IEA, inequality, Irish Times
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Could global warming trigger deadly new ozone crisis?
It’s an extraordinary privilege to inhabit the only known oasis of abundant complex life in the galaxy. We know from paleoclimatology that life on Earth has ebbed and flowed over the ages, including surviving five epic global mass extinction events. … Continue reading
RTÉ finally spins spotlight onto concerted climate action
Over the last decade and more, I’ve been in an uncomfortable position regarding RTÉ. On the one hand, I’ve long been a stout defender of public service broadcasting as a vital bulwark against total domination of our media landscape by … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sceptics
Tagged Climate Week, DCU, Irish Times, JOCCA, RTE
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A harrowing but narrow vision of our climate-wrecked futures
Back in July 2017, I wrote a pracis of an astonishing essay published earlier that year in the New York magazine. Titled ‘The Uninhabitable Earth‘, it set out an uncompromising picture of the rapid unravelling of the global climate system … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Psychology
Tagged David Wallace-Wells, Irish Times, Uninhabitable Earth
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A very British coup: rise and fall of the climate contrarians
In recent months, I’ve been involved as one of a number of authors in an international project for a forthcoming academic publication looking at the state of environmental journalism around the world (my brief covered the UK and Ireland). One … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Media, Sceptics
Tagged GWPF, Irish Times, Nigel Lawson, Richard Black
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A tale told by an idiot, full of sound & fury, signifying nothing
In many respects, 2018 has been another thoroughly dispiriting year on the climate and environment beat. The publication in October of the IPCC’s SR1.5 report extinguished any remote hope that the pace and severity of climate breakdown might be less … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media
Tagged Gavin Schmidt, Greta Thunberg, IPCC, Irish Times, Peter Thorne, Ray Bates
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Day of reckoning on global extinction crisis draws near
Below, my article as it was published in the Irish Times last month, with some referencing added back in. To borrow one of my own lines, “A solitary species has, in a heartbeat of geological time, overturned and routed half … Continue reading
Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Sustainability
Tagged Anthropocene, extinction, Irish Times, northern rhino, WWF
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Challenging Ireland’s climate contrarian-in-chief
Back in May 2014, UCD meteorologist, Prof Ray Bates penned a heartfelt plea for continued inaction on climate change, under the lurid headline: “Warning of over-alarmist stance on climate risk“. It was a weak, poorly argued exercise in that most … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sceptics
Tagged agriculture, COP21, IPCC, Irish Times, John Sweeney, NASA, Ray Bates
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Sensationalist ice-age story may betray covert media agenda
[This is a slightly extended and fully referenced (hyperlinked) version of an article which first appeared in Village Magazine on 14th August 2013.] GHOST: But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sceptics
Tagged Climate Change Denial, Irish Times
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Media throws in the towel on coverage of climate change
Below, my article, as it appeared in last Thursday’s Irish Times (and fair play to the IT for running a piece that is openly critical of its own editorial policy in this area; that’s the true mark of a serious … Continue reading
Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability
Tagged Irish Times, Media, Met Eireann, RTE
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